


Insulation

by prittyspeshul



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 09:30:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5492225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prittyspeshul/pseuds/prittyspeshul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is quite possibly the worst neighbor ever, or</p><p>thin walls make friendly neighbors (<b>not</b>). [neighbor AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insulation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leadusnot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leadusnot/gifts).



> Happy ho-ho-holidays! This is a special treat for putting up with me through all of my delayed updates. :D
> 
> And this is a gift to the fabulous leadusnot for coaching me through so many revisions all the time. If you haven't read her wonderful saga ( _When They Were Boys_ ), I highly recommend it.

Thump. Crash. Giggling that morphs into a stage whisper.

“Roman, shut up—I’m gonna get evicted if I get another noise complaint!”

Seth rolls over in his bed, groping for his phone and blinking in the sudden light of the screen. 2:33 AM. He groans and buries his phone under the pillow, flipping off the ceiling as another round of thumps—footsteps, running footsteps, followed by what had to be a tackle—resolve into shrieking laughter that cut through the shitty insulation directly into his eardrums. Every night it was like this; every night, the laughing, banging pots and pans as they cook, playing video games at an ungodly volume, dancing (his neighbor is much better at it than the boyfriend, steps much more fluid and lighter), talking that sounds more like yelling. And worst of all: the sex noises. Holy shit, did he wish he could unhear those. Everyone in the complex had to know his upstairs’ neighbor’s name by now, it was bellowed out so long and often. Small wonder he was on the verge of being evicted.

He rolled over again, curling into a tighter ball under the blankets and wrapping the pillow around his head. At least they weren’t fucking tonight, apparently. He dozes off to laughter and the television blaring so loudly he knows exactly which episode of Parks & Recreation they’re on. A sudden crash, like two bodies slamming into a wall, jolts him out of sleep again. He fumbles for the time, hissing at the brightness once more and groaning when he realizes it’s only 3:13. Woken him up twice in an hour—that has to be a new record. Again he rolls over, too tired even to bother with the ritualistic bird at the ceiling, burying his head under the blanket, praying the silence continues long enough for him to fall back to sleep, when the thumping begins.

“Fucking fuck,” he muttered, under his breath, as the first moan rips through the walls. So they were having sex after all. Grand. He wishes he thought about jacking off as often as they fuck. He rolls over and reaches for the remote; he may as well actually try to watch the movie he fell asleep to, since he has at least forty-five minutes to kill until they wrapped up. And for good measure, he nudges the volume up as high as it will go, passive aggression and self-preservation working together for once. It doesn’t help—the twin screams still filter through the first major dance sequence of _Anna Karenina_ , which under other circumstances he would probably have been impressed by but as it is he just throws the remote at the ceiling.

He finally falls asleep to the sounds of the shower starting and what passes for quiet banter between the couple in the bathroom above him.

 

 

 

He sees him in the lobby in the early afternoon, after he gets back from the gym. He’s checking his mail, the box right above Seth’s (of course), and Seth stomps over and stands in front of him, all righteous fury and sleep-deprived irritation. His neighbor turns, slowly, eyes still half-focused on the clump of envelopes in his hand, so Seth gets the full effect of his wrinkled white tee shirt, dirty jeans, and bare feet. It would be so much easier to stay mad at him if he weren’t so goddamn hot.

And then he talks.

“Can I help you?” His voice is gruff, like he might be a little hungover, and he’s chewing gum, something fruity, because Seth gets a noseful of apple smell and he’s not entirely sure what he’s supposed to do in this situation. He may not look like he’s as loud as a goddamn rocket launching, but that voice recalls unpleasant sensations of sleepless nights staring at the patterns in the ceiling because it wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

“You live upstairs from me,” he starts, feeling a little silly under the scrutiny of those blue eyes (blue? Really? Was that even fair?).

“Yah?” Accentuated with a pop of the gum and a bored stretch, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“I know I’ve only lived here for like two months, and you’ve been here for a lot longer, but you’re fucking loud as shit, man, could you not? Like, at least after ten? I get up at five or six and most nights you and your loud-ass boyfriend are cooking or doing some other stupid shit until after midnight. And don’t even get me started on the sex—” He’s heating up to a full rant, head of steam gathering, but then his neighbor has the audacity to laugh. He halts mid-sentence, astonished, and the man is bent double, shoulders heaving with the force of his hysterics. Seth has never hated anyone with the sudden totality and completeness that he hates this man. “You think this is funny? You’ll get evicted after one more noise complaint. I already talked to the landlord.”

The body straightens, wisps of blond poking haphazardly out of the grey beanie on his head, and he has the gall to smile at Seth, wiping tears from his eyes. And, of course, of fucking course, he’s got dimples.

“We’ll keep it down, man. Scouts’ Honor.” He crosses his heart and pats Seth on the shoulder as he leaves.

Seth follows him with his eyes, and he thinks two things: more than likely, the bastard knew he hadn’t gone to the landlord; and he’d be more likely to trust his word if he didn’t see him break down guffawing in the elevator before the doors close.

A few days later, there’s a pair of pink gummy earplugs taped to his door with a winking face drawn on the label. Seth considers walking upstairs and shoving them into his neighbor’s asshole.

 

 

 

Things go pretty well after that. He’s true to his word despite his smarmy face and Seth’s distrust, and he hasn’t been woken up more than three or four times since then. And, really, the earplugs do help, after he breaks down and uses them (he’s only a man, and a man of simple pleasures at that).

But there’s a particularly bad night about two months after the meeting at the mailboxes. This night, the noise is terrific—furniture crashing into the wall, things hitting the floor, yelling, and no amount of cushion wedged in his ears can protect him from that. He can’t really make out words through the muffling cloud of the earplugs, but the cadence sounds different than normal. He rolls over, stares at his phone—12:59—and debates taking his earplugs out. The door slams and heavy feet tread down the hall and thump down the stairs, each footfall loud enough to make him cringe. He takes the earplugs out then, cautiously, and is greeted by complete and total silence. Silence almost deafening in its singularity. He’s lived here for four months, and he’s never had a night this—completely—still. Did they both leave? Was there a second set of feet that he missed? Without the noise, his constant companion, practically a roommate (albeit an uninvited one), his very bed seems foreign.

He’s saved from further contemplation in that direction by the hideous sound of glass shattering over his head. The noise almost cruelly heightened, and Seth lets out an involuntary “fuck,” bolting upright and putting a hand to his racing heart; he swears he can distinguish each and every shard of glass as it falls into the carpet. Then the silence again, expectant, suffocating.

He is seized by a sudden urge to go upstairs and see if everything is alright. The notion is ridiculous; who the fuck was he to waltz up to that door? What would he even say? “Hey, heard you and your boyfriend having a tremendous fight immediately over my head, just checking out that everything is hunky-dori?” He groans and flops facedown on his bed, burying himself in his pillows and deciding it’s not his problem. At least he could get to sleep with some level of peace now, right?

He pretends not to hear the thump of a body crumpling to the floor or the broken sobs that follow.

He ends up sleeping with the earplugs in anyway.

                 

 

 

He sees him scarcely after that. Once in the lobby, at the mailboxes. Twice in the laundry room. Once in the parking garage, getting onto a motorcycle. He looks like shit. He slouches like he’s trying not to be noticed, bags under his eyes that look like he’s been punched, hair a wild tangled mess (Seth never realized he had curly hair. Seth never realized a lot of things).

The silence from upstairs is driving him insane. It’s oppressive, the silence. He finds himself playing something, anything, on the TV at all hours of the day and night to combat the black hole that’s taken residence above him.

He gets his first and second noise complaint in the same night. That has to be a record. 

 

 

 

He doesn’t know why he’s doing this, besides the fact that it fucking bothers him that the lack of noise bothers him. So Seth finds himself standing outside his apartment, one floor up, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and trying to build the courage to knock. He’s been here for half an hour, a nervous wreck, when he finally reaches out and tap-tap-taps on the door. Of course, silence answers. He taps again, harder, finally smacking the door with the side of his fist hard enough to leave a small dent.

“Oi, don’t abuse my door,” someone snaps behind him, and thank god, it’s him. He’s wearing a leather jacket and a scowl, carrying a full face helmet, and the first thing Seth thinks is, _it’s weird to see him with shoes on_. He eases between Seth and the door, leaning against it almost protectively, and the guarded expression on his face makes Seth’s heart plummet to his knees. “What do you want?”

He opens and closes his mouth like a fish, no sound coming out, and his neighbor’s eyebrow arches. For a second, just a second, there’s a flash of the man he met by the mailboxes, dimples and bare feet and a lazy smile, but then it’s gone, recaptured and held under lock and key. “Is it a noise complaint? Cause I’ve been on my best behavior the past month or two. So if that’s all, I’ll be going inside now.”

“No,” Seth finally manages, and it’s almost a shout, and the other man stares at him with those pretty blue eyes, mouth a little agape. “No, um, that is—uh. Do you remember me?”

“From the mailboxes? Course I do. I’m not a fucking moron.” He shifts his weight subtly, supporting both shoulders now against the door, and there’s an itty bitty strip of skin visible between his tee shirt and his jeans. Seth swallows. Goddamnit, this would all be so much easier if he weren’t so hot. Unbidden, the mental replay of a few months ago, the thump and the sobs, flits across his awareness, and his neighbor must see something he doesn’t like in his face, because he suddenly snaps, “Get on with it, dude. What the fuck do you want?”

“I want you to be fucking loud again!” Seth snaps back, and both of them stand there for a moment in shock, one at the sentence, one at actually having said it.

“I want you to be loud again,” he repeats, feeling like an idiot, “I want to get woken up by your stupid voice at two AM. I want to hear you yelling at your TV and banging pots and pans when you cook. I want to hear you dancing and laughing at the shitty puns you used to yell from the bathroom to the kitchen. I don’t want to hear you crying over the shower. I don’t want to have to watch the same comedy specials at max volume one more time. I want you to be obnoxious and annoying and loud and most of all I want to see you fucking smile again. You haven’t smiled in months.”

His neighbor is still for a moment, digesting his words. In the end, his face is inscrutable as he looks up at Seth.

“Do you want to come in?”

 

 

 

(Epilogue: five months later, the first-floor apartment is up for rent, and the entire apartment complex is thoroughly familiar with its former occupant's name.

He lives upstairs now.)


End file.
